Drawmer MC 2.1

You get a lot for your money, it sounds great (since its passive design) and has all the features you need in the studio. It would've got a top grade if the volume knob wouldn't have started to make noise while turning it after a couple of months, but on the other hand, most potentiometers do if they're not shitty expensive. I would've loved a stepped volume even if that would've upped the price a €100 or so.

Soundwise I think it's quite good and neutral.
It has a lot of functions and even though you would expect it to SWITCH between inputs, the fact that you can have multiple inputs on at once, can be actually quite handy.
The channel cut, phase and mono buttons are handy an can be combined to do handy things.

Here's its flaws for MY use:
1. The main volume pot got scratchy
2. it has less headroom than my DAC (SSL Alpha LInk) which means I cannot have the SSL at full output or the Drawmer will clip. I have to trim it down a few dB, which is annoying.
3. The headphone amps are way too loud for me. I don't think I've ever had them over 25%! I guess they are good to drive high impedance headphones, but it would be nice to be able to use them with my professional headphones without constant fear of hearing damage.
4. It has monitor output trims (while most monitors have analogue trims), I'd prefer to have seen INPUT trims instead, because convertors often don't have analogue output trims and trimming them digitally is obviously undesirable in a studio environment.

In the quest to improve the quality of my mixing, I researched ways that I could get the most improvement from my system for the smallest cash outlay. After consulting a number of sources (books, community sites, etc), it became clear that calibrated monitoring was a notable absence and something I should look into.

There were a few contenders at this price point, but in the end the Drawmer won out on it's well-curated set of features. It's perhaps not the most glamorous piece of gear, but it's clear that each feature was included for real people in real studios.

In practice, the most useful feature on the unit is one you can't even see until you turn it over - trim controls which allow independent level control for each monitor attached to the unit. Though the process of calibrating is tedious (you'll want an SPL meter for this), the result was stunning - perfect imaging and a dead-center mono. The sound quality is also shockingly good - straight-wire with gain, no character whatsoever.

The other controls are just as useful, and a read through the manual gives you a hint just how much the folks at Drawmer built this for daily use - two notable examples being the ability to audition the 'difference' signal and a slightly tweaked 'L/R' channel cut to make this feature more useful when using headphones.

having used it for a week, I'd find it hard to ever go back, and doubt I'll need an upgrade for some time.